BuddyBolden

Charles Joseph 'Buddy' Bolden was born in New Orleans in 1877 and came of age in the Uptown neighborhood's rich musical environment. By the late 1890s he was leading what many historians consider the first jazz band, playing in the dance halls and streets of New Orleans with a volume and improvisational freedom that was unlike anything heard before.

Bolden's band played a style that fused the march, ragtime, blues, and church music traditions of New Orleans into something new and electrifying. Accounts from those who heard him consistently emphasize the extraordinary power of his cornet — he was said to be audible from miles away on a clear night.

Tragically, no recordings of Bolden survive — he predates the era of jazz recording. He suffered a mental breakdown in 1907 and spent the remaining 24 years of his life in the Louisiana State Insane Asylum in Jackson, Louisiana. He died there in 1931, largely unknown outside New Orleans.

Bolden's legend has only grown in the century since his death. He is the subject of Michael Ondaatje's novel Coming Through Slaughter and a 2019 biopic. He represents the mysterious, irretrievable origins of jazz — the music that changed the world, heard by those who were there but never captured on record.